Security Systems News - Pat Eganhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/taxonomy/term/1415
enAcquiring thy neighbor?http://securitysystemsnews.com/article/acquiring-thy-neighbor
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<div class="field-item even">Best practices according to Jennings, Egan, Loud, Goldstein and Cerasuolo</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-07-17T00:00:00-04:00">07/17/2013</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Martha Entwistle</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>YARMOUTH, Maine—One of the best ways for security companies to build density is to acquire a local competitor, but there also are potential pitfalls when doing business in your backyard, according to five security company executives who have experience with these kinds of transactions. </p>
<p>John Jennings, president of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Safeguard Security; Pat Egan, president of Lancaster, Pa.-based Select Security; John Loud, president of LOUD Security Systems, based in Kennesaw, Ga.; David Goldstein, president of Guardian Alarm in Detroit; and John Cerasuolo, CEO of ADS Security, based in Nashville, spoke to Security Systems News about best practices for acquiring neighboring businesses.</p>
<p>There was some difference of opinion—particularly on the question of when to rebrand an acquired company—but all agreed that, as Egan put it, “you need a little extra TLC when you’re dealing with a guy in your backyard.”</p>
<p>For ADS, that TLC starts well before any acquisition activity.</p>
<p>Be a good neighbor, says ADS’ John Cerasuolo. “It’s very important that your company behave in an ethical way and have a good relationship with competitors.”</p>
<p>He said that ADS has a proactive program where they reach out to competitors so they get to know ADS.</p>
<p>“We’re competitors, but there’s no reason we can’t have a trusting, respectful relationship,” he said. In addition to good business relationships, this goodwill “sets the stage, so that if they’re ever thinking about selling they know what kind of company we are, how we treat our customers and employees, [and] that we’re aggressively growing.”</p>
<p>Cerasuolo said that getting competitors “interested in our company, what we do and how we do business … can lead to acquisitions [down the road].”</p>
<p>Once an acquisition is completed, nomenclature matters. When you buy a direct competitor, it’s best to announce the deal to customers as a merger rather than acquisition. “We’ll announce it to the customers as a merger of two assets,” Egan said. “You don’t want to make it sound like you’re superior over another.”</p>
<p>Jennings pointed out that “customers don’t like to be acquired.”</p>
<p>And you enlist the seller in announcing deals to customers. Letters are sent out to customers from the seller and new owner, explaining that this deal will be beneficial to the customer and that the former owner made the decision to sell to this particular company.</p>
<p>Goldstein, of Guardian Alarm, said that welcoming the new customers is a “driven campaign that goes on for four to six months.” Guardian sends a series of letters, starting with a welcome letter, and 60 days later Guardian may send a letter offering that customer an opportunity to use an automatic payment feature. Other offers follow. “They hear from us so often, they believe their security company has always been Guardian,” Goldstein said.</p>
<p>John Loud said the initial customer letter may “also makes the case that the seller chose to sell to another local company, not a larger regional or national brand.”</p>
<p>Loud hand signs every letter that goes out to new customers and includes his cell phone number.</p>
<p>Loud also rolls a truck out to every new account he acquires. It’s an expensive practice, but one that pays dividends, he said. During that visit, the LOUD technician updates the emergency contact list, recertifies the system, and walks through the operation of the system with the customer.</p>
<p>This ensures the alarm system is in good working order and that the customer’s billing and monitoring information is correct and up to date. It’s also an ideal time “to sell add-ons, whether that’s cellular or interactive services, or a maintenance plan. At the very least, they may want us to replace a battery,” Loud explained.</p>
<p>The personal visit is an opportunity for the new customer to get to know LOUD Security. It may have been several years since the former company was in touch with the customer. “The goal is to keep attrition down,” Loud said, and the visit is one way to do that.</p>
<p>LOUD said he figures the cost of that visit into the purchase price. “We equate it to a four multiple,” he said.</p>
<p>Loud pointed out that sellers are interested in assisting with the transition, because they must typically guarantee all accounts for 12 months after the deal closes.</p>
<p>For important accounts, it’s often a good idea for the seller and buyer to visit those customers before the deal is announced.</p>
<p>Egan said he bought one company and two large customers were not interested in becoming Select Security customers. “I went out with the seller, met the people,” he said. “We assured them that all the staff [of the acquired company] were coming on board, that nothing [in the agreement would be disturbed] and that that monitoring would change for the better. Today, those customers are still ours.”</p>
<p>While a local competitor is generally selling because the owner wants to retire, there are other situations—death of an owner or an owner who is terminally ill, for example—that need to be handled delicately.</p>
<p>Other situations also warrant caution on the buyer’s part.</p>
<p>Understanding the employees is “very, very important, and more so if you’re buying the guy next door,” Egan said. You want to know if an employee or an owner intends to go out and start a competing company and whether non-compete agreements are in place.</p>
<p>John Jennings put it this way: “You need to understand the end-game of the person you’re acquiring.”</p>
<p>All said that they generally try to hire employees of the former owner, but they had different opinions about when to rebrand an acquired company. “I don’t make global changes [immediately] after closing,” Egan said. “I’ll use their name for a while. We’ll answer the phones as ABC Alarm for a while, then it becomes ABC Alarm/Select Security, then eventually it becomes all Select Security.”</p>
<p>Jennings and Loud, on the other hand, said they will rebrand an acquired local competitor immediately. “We try to make them our customer as quickly as possible. I want them to know they’re dealing with Safeguard,” Jennings said. He said that his brand is very strong in the Scottsdale, Ariz. area and “we want customers to see that they’re dealing with a better company.”</p>
<p>The exception would be if he acquired a company outside of his general area. “If I went to another city, I would probably keep [the seller’s] brand, because his brand would probably be stronger than mine in a different market.”</p>
<p>Loud concurred. “I always rebrand right away,” he said. He also agreed with Jennings about keeping a competitors’ brand if he were acquiring outside the area. For example, he said, “Loud has no brand or value in Macon, [Ga.], so why would I change a good brand if [an acquired company] had a good thing going?”</p>
<p>Regardless of whether you decide to rebrand an acquired company, there’s one golden rule of acquiring thy neighbor, according to Egan. “Treat them right,” he said. “If you don’t it’ll be your last deal in this industry.” </p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Acquiring thy neighbor?" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 18:15:26 +0000Leif Kothe16629 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/acquiring-thy-neighbor#commentsSelect Security branches out to Utahhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/select-security-branches-out-utah
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2011-10-06T00:00:00-04:00">10/06/2011</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Tess Nacelewicz</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>LANCASTER, Pa.—Select Security--a super-regional based here that has spent the past two summers trying to beat the big summer-model companies at their own game by running its own door-knocking program--is upping the ante.</p>
<p>Select is opening its own office in Orem, Utah, literally in the big companies’ backyard, to serve as a recruiting and call center and also to do some selling, Patrick Egan, Select Security president, told <em>Security Systems News</em>. Egan also recently opened a sales and recruiting office in California.</p>
<p>The new 2,000-square-foot office is slated to open Oct. 10, Egan said. “The office is our local branch in Utah, it is our recruiting office in Utah, it is our call center in Utah, but more importantly it’s the face of corporate Select Security in Utah as well,” Egan added.</p>
<p>Egan said the company also has just opened an office in Roseville, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento, which will allow his door-knocking sales reps to work all year instead of having to quit once winter approaches in Pennsylvania. “It’s going to be a year-round selling market for us, but also a recruiting and training ground,” Egan said.</p>
<p>He characterized the two changes as a “big step” for Select Security, because it’s the first time the 13-year-old company has ventured out of its home state. “We’re excited about both of those things,” he said.<br />They’re also the latest developments in Select Security’s effort to add door knocking to its successful conventional sales business. Egan said that conventional side of the business would generate more than $10 million in revenue this year.</p>
<p>“We are the traditional company that has really embraced this [door knocking], and it has worked for us,” Egan said. The new changes out West are designed to enhance the company’s door-knocking program back East, he said.</p>
<p>He <a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/summer-sales-if-you-can%E2%80%99t-beat-%E2%80%98em-join-%E2%80%98em" target="_blank">started his own program</a> after seeing the big out-of-state summer-model companies come to this city of about 56,000 people and plant lawn signs across from Select Security’s headquarters. Egan went to Utah and recruited college students there to sell door to door in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2010.</p>
<p>That first summer, Select Security had one team of door knockers who sold 200 systems. This summer, there were three teams—a total of about 25 sales reps—and now that Egan has extended the teams’ selling season through next April by opening the Sacramento office, he expect they’ll have sold more than 1,000 systems by the season’s end. “Our average credit score is 774 … and our average RMR is just under $45,” Egan said. And he said about 98 percent of the customers have signed 60-month contracts.</p>
<p>But Egan said for 2012, he wants to get a jump on recruiting and training—which the two new offices will allow him to do.</p>
<p>Select Security’s leased office space in Orem is located between Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University, whose main campus is in nearby Provo. “We’re intentionally between two large colleges [with a total of more than 60,000 students],” Egan said.</p>
<p>The area also is home to a number of large summer model companies, including Pinnacle Security in Orem and Vivint in Provo.</p>
<p>“There are over 20 companies in the [Utah] Valley,” Egan said. “We believe we’ve got a great labor pool to pull from.”</p>
<p>The office also will be Select Security’s call center, which collects and verifies customer data. This summer, he said Select Security had an 11-seat call center here in Lancaster, but he couldn’t find the right hires locally so had to pay for transportation and housing for key call center members from Utah.</p>
<p>The new larger Utah center, with 25 to 30 seats, will be staffed locally, Egan said. And because Utah time is two hours earlier than Pennsylvania time, call center staff won’t have to work so late to talk to Eastern customers in the evenings, Egan said.</p>
<p>The office will not only recruit sales staff, but will train them there too, he said. “We will be installing systems in Utah as well because we’re requiring all of our reps to do six pre-season sales before they go out next year,” Egan said.</p>
<p>He said Select Security’s goal “is to own the door-to-door sales program in our markets. I want to keep the big companies out, so if we’re doing it and we’re better at it because we’re the local provider and we’re better received, we think we’ve got just a little bit of a niche over a national company.”</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Select Security branches out to Utah" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:17:44 +0000SSN Editor14991 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/select-security-branches-out-utah#commentsSelect Security gears up for summerhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/select-security-gears-summer
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<div class="field-item even">Egan: Selling for an in-state company should be easier sale</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"><p>LANCASTER, Pa.—Last summer, Select Security, a super-regional alarm company based here, <a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/summer-sales-if-you-can%E2%80%99t-beat-%E2%80%98em-join-%E2%80%98em" target="_blank">successfully experimented with a summer model program to beat the big boys at their own game</a>.</p>
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This summer, the company is going further: It is not only repeating its summer sales program but has hired sales representatives from some of the big companies to run it. </p>
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Company president Patrick Egan said door-knocking sales representatives should have an advantage working for a traditional security company like his, which does business throughout Pennsylvania.</p>
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“They’re going into our markets,” he told <em>Security Systems News</em>. “They’re going to be selling our name, they’re not selling for an out-of-state company. It should be an easier sale and easier close.”</p>
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Also, he said, the company is not waiting for summer weather to get its program underway. Instead, it plans to have a small team of college students do some door knocking in March over spring break.</p>
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“They’ll test the market,” Egan said. “They’ll do a neighborhood and see where there’s good knocking and where not.”</p>
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Last year Egan went to Utah, home of the big summer model companies, and hired some college students to sell alarm systems for Select Security door to door in Pennsylvania.</p>
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This summer, Select Security plans to have three teams of college student summer sales staff instead of one—and has hired sales staff who formerly worked for big companies to run the program, Egan said.</p>
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Derek Taylor, who formerly worked for Pinnacle Security, recently joined Select Security as its high-volume residential program sales manager, the company said.</p>
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The company also hired Matthew Kemp as its high-volume residential program area sales manager. Kemp’s door-to-door experience includes working for APX Alarm, now Vivint, according to Select Security. Kemp will report to Taylor and have primary responsibilities for the central Pennsylvania, Lancaster, York and Harrisburg regions, the company said.</p>
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“Our team is coming out really nicely,” Egan told SSN.</p>
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Taylor said, “I want to work with Patrick and the guys and take a residential program to new heights and to new levels.”</p>
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Select Security recently has been recruiting in states such as Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. “Recruiting is going very well,” Egan said in early February. “I’m pleased.”</p>
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He said that this summer he plans to have three offices in different locations throughout Pennsylvania with 15 to 20 sales representatives at each location going door to door.</p>
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Also, he said, “another thing Derek and Matt are going to do this year… they’re going to bring half a dozen kids out and we’ll do 100 to 150 systems, and we’re going to that out of Lancaster over spring break.”</p>
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In addition, Egan said, if the summer program this year is successful, he may keep some students on to sell through the fall as late as November.</p>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Select Security gears up for summer" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:06:11 +0000legacy_editor14372 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/select-security-gears-summer#commentsCalif. sprinkler measure lacks monitoring requirementhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/calif-sprinkler-measure-lacks-monitoring-requirement
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<div class="field-item even">Sprinkler requirement for new residences is unlikely to generate revenue for alarm companies</div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Tess Nacelewicz</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"><p>PACHECO, Calif.—On Jan. 1 this year, California joined Pennsylvania in becoming the first states in the nation to require the installation of automatic fire sprinkler systems in new one- and two-family homes.</p>
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John Viniello, president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association, praised the development as a life-saving measure in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.</p>
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However, the new requirement in California is unlikely to generate additional business for fire alarm companies because it lacks an amendment mandating monitoring of home sprinkler systems, according to Shane Clary, VP, codes and standards compliance, of Bay Alarm Co., which is based here. Bay Alarm provides fire, security and monitoring services to more than 100,000 residential and commercial customers throughout California, and monitors commercial sprinkler systems and also has a small number of residential sprinkler accounts.</p>
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“Let me emphasize,” Clary told <em>Security Systems News</em>, “there is no requirement that these systems be supervised by a central station, there is no requirement that there even be a flow switch on the system … if alarm companies are thinking they can go out and start selling monitoring services to all these new systems, unfortunately they won’t.”</p>
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Clary, a former chairman of the board of the Automatic Fire Alarm Association, said, “We did try though the AFAA to get an amendment as this code was being adopted two years ago to require a flow switch.”</p>
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A flow switch is designed to monitor any water flow through the sprinkler system and can be wired to an alarm or connected to a monitored security system. Clary said most of the flow switches are manufactured by Potter Electric Signal Co. or System Sensor, a Honeywell company.</p>
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However, Clary said, the amendment met opposition from builders as too expensive, and fire and building officials felt such a measure wasn’t necessary.</p>
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He said they argued that a home sprinkler system “is designed to suppress a fire so you don’t need to worry about it.”</p>
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However, Clary said, “I have a different opinion. Let’s say you’re on vacation or at work and something happens. It would be nice just because of water damage and whatever if someone would notice if something’s going on.”</p>
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Communities in California have the option of mandating their own local requirements for flow switches and monitoring to the state’s new residential sprinkler requirement, but Clary said at this point he’s not aware of any local jurisdictions planning to do that.</p>
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In Pennsylvania, one alarm company based in the city of Lancaster saw the new residential sprinkler requirement there as an opportunity to buy a sprinkler company last fall.</p>
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<a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/super-regional-aims-increase-rmr-sprinklers" target="_blank">Select Security president Patrick Egan told SSN</a> in December that the company’s new sprinkler division would offer sprinkler installation, inspection, testing, and service to residential and business customers throughout the state. He also hopes to sell alarm and security systems to his sprinkler customers. </p>
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Clary said he wasn’t aware of any alarm companies in California buying sprinkler companies, and said Bay Alarm had no plans to do so.</p>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Calif. sprinkler measure lacks monitoring requirement" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:55:39 +0000legacy_editor14298 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/calif-sprinkler-measure-lacks-monitoring-requirement#commentsSuper-regional aims to increase RMR with sprinklershttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/super-regional-aims-increase-rmr-sprinklers
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-12-09T09:11:44-05:00">12/09/2010</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Tess Nacelewicz</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"><p>LANCASTER, Pa.—Select Security, a super-regional based here, has done something out of the ordinary: It recently acquired a fire sprinkler company and turned it into Select Security’s new sprinkler division.</p>
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Company president Patrick Egan said Select Security’s purchase of Fire Systems Inc. of Ephrata, Pa. is unusual for a security company, but makes good business sense. It will lead to new sprinkler and alarm customers for Select Security, and generate additional RMR as the company takes over the annual inspections required for sprinkler systems, Egan said.</p>
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“We expect it to create significant installation and service volume and contribute a significant amount of RMR in 2011,” he said.</p>
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The sprinkler company is now renamed Fire Systems Integrated and its former owner, C. Thomas Perry, who has 36 years of fire sprinkler business experience, is the general manager of the new, independent division, Egan said.</p>
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“We’re going to sell his customers alarms, we’re going to sell my customers sprinkler stuff, and were going to convert his business style into more RMR,” Egan told Security Systems News.</p>
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Select Security, which closed on the sprinkler company purchase in September, formally announced the acquisition on Dec. 2, noting it made Select Security one of the first security alarm sales, service, and monitoring companies to operate a fire sprinkler division. The sprinkler firm’s employees will join Select Security and four to six employees will be added in the next 12 months, bringing Select Security’s total workforce to 110, Egan said.</p>
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“This vertical integration is the next natural step in continuing to progress our company and make it a single source provider for all security and fire protection needs,” Egan said in a written statement.</p>
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His company already has been servicing sprinkler systems on national accounts in Pennsylvania that include Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Cracker Barrel. The new division will offer sprinkler installation to homes and light commercial properties, and inspection, testing, and service to all types of residential and business customers throughout the state, Egan said.</p>
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In an interview with SSN, he noted, “In a traditional sense, a sprinkler company is not a recurring revenue model company.”</p>
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But he said sprinkler companies do “RMR-like work” in inspecting sprinkler systems once a year and certifying that they meet NFPA fire code standards.</p>
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“We’re going to contact [sprinkler] customers, we’re going to sell them [five-year] service inspection contracts and we’re going to guarantee them a service rate and all that stuff, and we’ll bill that to them probably quarterly, and we’re going to turn the sprinkler division into a traditional RMR-style business,” Egan said.</p>
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Then, he said, “the next thing we’re going to do is reach out to all his hundreds and hundreds of sprinkler customers and talk to them about alarm service.”</p>
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Also, he said, Select Security is in the process of contacting its own customers, who number more than 3,000, “to let them know we’re in the sprinkler business and to try and get their sprinkler business.”</p>
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“We believe there’s a lot of pull-through RMR opportunity,” Egan said. He calculated that in the short time Select Security has owned the new company, “we’ve probably added over a $1,000 a month of RMR.”</p>
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Also, he said, the acquisition of the company comes just before a new building code in Pennsylvania takes effect on Jan 1., requiring all new single- and two-family homes to have sprinkler systems.</p>
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“That’s going to be a great opportunity for our salesmen,” Egan said.</p>
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Select Security also is going to train its field service technicians to do emergency repairs on sprinklers from the company’s six offices throughout the state in Lancaster, Altoona, Stroudsburg, Sayre, Williamsport, and Franklin, he said.</p>
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Another security company, Safeguard Security in Scottsdale, Ariz., bought a small sprinkler company earlier this year. CEO John Jennings told SSN in December that business is “going great.” Safeguard provides service, inspection and repairs, but not installation of sprinkler systems, he said.</p>
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When asked why more security companies haven’t gone the sprinkler route like Safeguard and Select Security, Jennings replied, “Maybe we’re a little more forward-thinking than the rest of the industry.”</p>
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He continued: “When you lose accounts to a sprinkler company because they walk in and do an inspection and say, ‘We can do your monitoring too,’ it’s sort of defensive move for me, where we can maintain the accounts, and go after the accounts of sprinkler companies.”</p>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Super-regional aims to increase RMR with sprinklers" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:11:44 +0000legacy_editor14222 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/super-regional-aims-increase-rmr-sprinklers#comments